Let’s start with a question:
Assuming you’re a British National, say over 30 years old and there was a referendum today with the simple question:
Do you agree the country should increase in population to approximately 70 million people by 2027?” YES NO
How would you vote?
According to the BBC News article on the 29th October 2015, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34666382) the majority of the predicted population growth in the UK will be from immigration, presumably from the European Union (EU), together with a minority from asylum seekers and professionals coming to work.
What’s actually behind the UK’s population growth?
Two things: Allowed EU migration together with actual UK Government policy.
Put in the simplest terms, the Government needs money from income & corporation taxes to run the country. As the workforce ages, stops working and stops paying taxes, the services Government provides (particularly the NHS and Pensions) increase in cost as the workforce declines; unless of course, more people are added to the workforce.
There you have it!
A fundamentally flawed, unsustainable policy that almost guarantees population growth.
In the UK, the first significant manifestation of Government policy to increase tax revenue was encouraging women (housewives) to go to work. Those of you around when this policy came in would be forgiven for not remembering hearing the Government state the actual reason for the policy; because they didn’t! It was presented as an equality issue, thereby masking the real reason.
You might remember the furore over uncontrolled immigration during the Tony Blair / Gordon Brown Governments? Jack Straw subsequently described his Government’s immigration policy as appalling; which it was. Why was immigration and population growth such a low-level topic for Labour during this period?
Because the Economists & Policy Makers present population growth to Politicians as THE SOLUTION to Government revenue and national GDP growth, even though it’s fundamentally flawed and unsustainable.
How smart is that?
There is a common theme of Economists & Policy Makers ignoring fundamental issues leading to policies that side-step the real issues, introducing new issues and making the situation worse than if nothing had been done. Take subsidising renewable energy as a good example. The principal issue with energy sources is the cost of pollution. Add-in the actual cost of pollution remediation to fossil fuels and they are not economic.
Very simple.
Nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind & wave energy have minimal costs associated with pollution and therefore should be the energy sources being used. Progress in reducing our damage to the World will be ineffectual until Economists, Policy Makers & Governments adopt and implement holistic, environmentally neutral energy policies where pollution is remediated in real time and cost. It’s not rocket science, but getting to this status will likely take another 50-100 years. Establishing the principal that pollution remediation is mandatory is the crucial first step towards the proper economics of energy.
Back to population growth.
The real challenge for the United Kingdom is to decide what total population it should have, rather than continue following the current, flawed programme.
Before this can happen some smart people need to identify a new approach to Government services and funding that is sustainable without constant population growth.
I can hear you say; “this is not realistic”.
This may be beyond the expertise of most Economists, Policy Makers and almost certainly Politicians; however, if we surrender then we have to accept the current approach leading to significant population growth.
It’s natural for people to choose the path of least resistance. Politicians have effectively done this in deciding to increase the working age population via migration.
We currently have an opportunity to get our Politicians to understand we don’t want an increasing population and that the Government needs to change its approach whereby there’s an agreed total population and Government services are provided as a direct function of a capped population, together with corporate tax revenue.
Inevitably this means Government services will have to be smaller and people will likely have to use private insurance and more efficient privately supplied services. It’s unlikely that Government itself can become significantly more efficient, although this should be attempted. I suspect the NHS’s commercial efficiency is Fourth Quartile, using large amounts of our money to little effect.
In summary, the UK Government, like most other advanced countries (Germany is a case in point), needs to focus on establishing a revenue & service that reflects an agreed total population in a sustainable manner.
This will take decades to achieve and, because it’s significantly longer than the political term, laws that establish the basis for Government, including a maximum population, balanced budgets and pollution remediation in real time, need to be cast in stone.
Any proposed changes to these fundamental laws must have a referendum, otherwise the UK could, for example, suffer another period of uncontrolled population growth such as happened during the last Labour Governments. In effect these basic laws need to become constitutional so they cannot be repealed or modified by any majority Government.
There shouldn’t be any major issues moving to this approach because it is win-win for the main political groups in the UK; socialist, capitalist, and green.
And it's morally correct, so let’s go for it!
Any wealthy philanthropists out there who want to put some serious money behind re-positioning democracy into the agenda described above; please get in contact…
I’m not holding my breath....
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